Biographical Data :

Television presenter who briefly became an icon for many Afghan youth.

Shaima was part of a generation in transition who was caught between the Taliban’s medieval politics and the media revolution that engulfed Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Her enthusiasm and youthful exuberance pushed her to the world of Afghan television – in Tolo, Kabul’s first private TV channel. Soon she became the idol of young people who were mesmerised by her programme, HOP. Shaima’s HOP programme broadcast western, Iranian, Indian, Turkish, Arabic and Afghan music. She was sacked by Tolo TV in March 2005: allegedly, her personality did not meet its requirements.

Shaima Rezayee who was brought up in a relatively poor but open-minded family of the Hazara minority in the Afghan northern city of Sar-e-Pol was murdered in her home in Kabul, in May 2005.